My uncle, the painter John Christoforou, who has died in Paris aged 92, had an artistic career spanning more than 60 years. He became known for his powerful expressionist figure paintings, reflecting his solitary and slightly dystopian view of the human condition. His work was of heroic scale, with vivid colour, dynamic blacks and vigorous brushwork.

John was born to Greek parents in London. Both died while he was still a child, after which he moved between Athens and London, and he was raised by various relatives. He finally returned to Britain in 1938 aged 17, and in 1941 was called up, serving five years as a navigator in the RAF. For a period he was assigned to a squadron of flying boats rescuing aircrew at sea. The memory of retrieving drowned colleagues lived with him and informed his work.

At the end of the war he was encouraged to remain with the RAF, but he held hard to his single-minded vision of a career in art. His first show in London, at the Twenty Brook Street Gallery, was followed by others at Gallery One and Gimpel Fils, as well as group shows at the Institute of Contemporary Art and the Whitechapel.

In 1956 he set up a studio in Shepherd's Bush, west London, and the same year married Ruth Fox, who also acted as his studio assistant and publicity agent. After their marriage the couple moved to Paris, a city they felt would offer more opportunity to develop and exhibit his work.

In 1960 he had the first of several shows at the Rive Gauche gallery, and in 1965, he won the International Association of Art Critics prize in London. While showing widely in France, he began to attract increasing attention across Europe, exhibiting in the Netherlands in 1970 and having a retrospective in the Randers Kunstmuseum in Denmark in 1974.

He was particularly popular in the Nordic countries and continued to show in Scandinavia regularly for the next 35 years. At the turn of the century Greece began to take an interest in him, leading to new connections and an exhibition in Athens in 2002.

His last studio was in the suburbs of Paris, where he and Ruth lived for the last 20 years in three modest rooms attached to a large former car showroom, which was his studio space. Although a solitary, driven man, he was at heart a kindly, gentle and sensitive person with a quiet charm that many grew to love.

He continued to show his work until his 91st year. His final exhibition was in 2012 at the Chateau de Vascoeuil in Normandy. His work is held in many public and private collections.